Early in 2007, Kalapa Recordings released The Tibetan Buddhist Path,
a fourteen-talk seminar by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche from the
inaugural summer of Naropa Institute in 1974. The seminar was hugely influential
at the time, and the DVD set has been a huge success as well, with nearly
100 Shambhala Centers and Groups presenting the DVD seminar in classes
this year.

We are pleased to announce that the second seminar taught by the Vidyadhara
at Naropa that summer, Meditation: The Way of the Buddha, is now available
as part of the same series of digitally-remastered video collections. Meditation:
The Way of the Buddha also includes a study guide to enrich the viewing
experience.

In the talks, Trungpa Rinpoche presents the basics of meditation practice,
how practice relates to one’s state of mind, and how the basic practice
can expand into a greater sense of mindfulness and awareness. In pre-release
screenings held in Halifax, these talks have proved to be a moving (if
not yet enlightening!)experience for new and experienced practitioners
alike.

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http://jonimitchell.com/research/g_entry.cfm?id=16
snip:
He was the bad boy of Zen. I wrote a song about a visit I made to him
called "Refuge of the Road." I consider him
one of my great teachers, even though I saw him only three times. Once
I had a fifteen-minute audience with him in which we argued. He told me
to quit analyzing. I told him I couldn't - I'm an artist, you know. Then
he induced into me a temporary state where the concept of "I" was absent,
which lasted for three days. [Later], at the very end of Trungpa's life
I went to visit him. I wanted to thank him. He was not well. He was green
and his eyes had no spirit in them at all, which sort of stunned me, because
the previous times I'd seen him he was quite merry and puckish - you know,
saying "shit" a lot. I leaned over and looked into his eyes, and I said,
"How is it in there? What do you see in there? And this voice came, like,
out of a void, and it said, "Nothing." So, I want over and whispered in
his ear, "I just came to tell you that when I left you that time, I had
three whole days without self conscious-ness, and I wanted to thank you
for the experience." And he looked up at me, and all the light came back
into his face and he goes, "Really?" And then he sank back into this black
void again.

Mitchell: I did, briefly. I didn't get involved for years, and then
I went on [Bob Dylan's] Rolling Thunder [tour] and they asked me how I
wanted to be paid, and [it was like] I ran away to join the circus:
Clowns used to get paid in wine - pay me in cocaine because everybody
was strung out on cocaine. It was [Tibetan Buddhist spiritual master] Chögyam
Trungpa who snapped me out of it just before Easter in 1976. He asked me,
"Do you believe in God?" I said, "Yes, here's my god and here is my prayer,"
and I took out the cocaine and took a hit in front of him. So I was very,
very rude in the presence of a spiritual master.

RD: And he was able to??

Mitchell: His nostrils began to flare like bellows, and he [began] a
rhythmic breathing. I remember thinking, What's with his nose? It was almost
hypnotic. They have a technique called emanating grace ways. I assume he
went into a breathing technique and a meditation. I left his office and
for three days I was in [an] awakened state. The technique completely silenced
that thing, the loud, little noisy radio station that stands between you
and the great mind.

RD: And when you came out of that awakened state??

Mitchell: The thing that brought me out of the state was my first "I"
thought. For three days I had no sense of self, no self-consciousness;
my mind was back in Eden, the mind before the Fall. It was simple-minded,
blessedly simple-minded. And then the "I" came back, and the first thought
I had was, Oh, my god. He enlightened me. Boom. Back to normal - or what
we call normal but they call insanity.

RD: It was his breathing technique and he managed to pass it on to you.
And when you came out of your three days, you were no longer [using]
cocaine?

Mitchell: Yes. Ten years later when I learned he was dying, I went back
to thank him
Lyrics to Refuge of the Roads:

I met a friend of spirit
He drank and womanized
And I sat before his sanity
I was holding back from crying
He saw my complications
And he mirrored me back simplified
And we laughed how our perfection
Would always be denied
"Heart and humor and humility"
He said "Will lighten up your heavy load"
I left him for the refuge of the roads

I fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beachtown
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs
And I wound up fixing dinner
For them and Boston Jim
I well up with affection
Thinking back down the roads to then
The nets were overflowing
In the Gulf of Mexico
They were overflowing in the refuge of the roads

There was spring along the ditches
There were good times in the cities
Oh, radiant happiness
It was all so light and easy
Till I started analyzing
And I brought on my old ways
A thunderhead of judgment was
Gathering in my gaze
And it made most people nervous
They just didn't want to know
What I was seeing in the refuge of the roads

I pulled off into a forest
Crickets clicking in the ferns
Like a wheel of fortune
I heard my fate turn, turn turn
And I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues
To the innocence in here
These are the clouds of Michelangelo
Muscular with gods and sungold
Shine on your witness in the refuge of the roads

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads